Prey Weekly Update #23: GOLD Edition

Welcome to an edition of the Weekly Update that I've been dying to write for a long time. Prey is officially GOLD!!

After five years of development, Prey is done and on its way to manufacturing.

It's a good feeling. No, it's a great feeling. Of course, like any project, there are a hundred little things I wanted to fix. But there comes a time when you have to stop and agree that it's time for the game to escape into the world.

Understandably, spirits are really high here at Human Head. We just went gold, and last week the PC demo was released to an amazing amount of praise (a huge thanks to everyone who emailed us to say congrats -- we all truly appreciate the letters of encouragement).

And other good news today -- the Xbox 360 demo has finally been released! If you have a 360, go grab it! See what that kid up the hall with the PC has been raving about lately.

The demo was, in a way, an interesting experiment that's paying off very well. I mean, think about it: how many games these days release a demo before the full version is released? We noticed that trend that felt that we could get a demo out before the full version. Nothing markets a game better than the game itself.

Not only that, but I've heard a lot of people are happy that the demo contains so much content. Why did we choose to release a fairly large five-level demo? Well, we've always wanted to release the demo from the start of the game. At the same time, we knew it was important for people to experience SpiritWalking and DeathWalk. But neither of those features come into play until the fifth level of the game. So, it was pretty obvious that we needed to include all of those levels in the demo. And, of course, we needed to show off MP. So that added on an additional two levels. End result: A pretty big demo.

A few people have mentioned that we've shown off all the tricks in the game already in the demo. Not by a long shot. There are still a lot of things that we held back: the shuttle vehicle, a lot of other cool portal and gravity puzzles, more creatures, and different environments. But, this is starting to sound like a marketing pitch...

So what's going on here at HH now? Well, many people here at HH are taking well-deserved breaks, before we dive into our next project. But, we're committed to supporting Prey. We're also working on additional content for both PC and the 360 -- nothing concrete that we can announce right now, other than some new DM maps (especially some maps designed specifically for one-on-one matches!). No estimate on when this content will be released, but we hope to start internal testing of at least one of the new DM maps next week.

We've also been spending some time online deathmatching in the demo. So if you see a Human Head person online, you know, take it easy on them. :-)

Until next week, stay out of trouble and enjoy the Prey demos!

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

P.S. Sorry there was no update last week, in the aftermath of the PC demo release, we totally forgot to do one last Friday!

Additionally, if you are a gaming news website, and wish to be updated directly with notification of these updates, please email us with a link to your website and a request to be added, and we'll email you with the next update.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 6:19 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey 360 Demo Now Available on Xbox Live Marketplace

We've just gotten word that the Demo for Prey is up and live on Xbox Live Marketplace. Go get it! Here's the official Press Release from 2K about the demo's availability:

Xbox Live(r) Marketplace is now featuring a playable demo of PREY(tm), the heavily anticipated first person shooter for Xbox 360(tm) and PC. PREY literally turns the FPS genre upside-down by introducing innovative gameplay elements such as wall-walking, gravity flipping, and portals that allow enemies to appear out of thin air.

Special thanks to the Prey community and fans for being as patient as they were when we missed the date for the demo.

I'd also like to offer BIG thanks to Microsoft for making an exception and posting the demo on a Friday. Eager gamers will now have the demo in their hands for the long Holiday weekend. Stop giving Major Nelson a hard time! :)

Enjoy the demo! Look for Prey in retail stores soon. You can pre-order here.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:20 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Duke Nukem Jam!

Lest you think we've forgotten about Duke in all this Prey coverage, we're here to bring you something that proves the fans still remember. Check out this video from Christopher Paul Kline (aka VertexGuy). It's him playing the Duke Nukem Theme. It's quite impressive, and here's what Christopher has to say about it in his own words.

This is my rendition on guitar of the Duke Nukem theme song. I used influences from the Megadeth version, the original, and my own twists ... all to come up with the final composition. All tracks, including the backing were played by me. Hope you all like it :)

You can visit his website here, where you can also download an mp3 version of the song.

Very cool work Chris, we're impressed here!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:35 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Has Gone Gold!

Prey has gone gold. The game will be released publically in North America on July 11th, and in Europe on July 14th. If you haven't pre-ordered your copy already, there's still time! Check out the preorder page for full details on the different versions available, and how to get them.

If you want to read the full press release from 2K Games and 3D Realms, you can do so here.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 9:56 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey: Videogame Music Finally Grows Up

Now that the PC version of the Prey demo is out, those of you who have played it have had a chance to sample the brilliant musical score in the game. There's lots LOTS more in the full version, but the demo does give you a taste. If you enjoyed the music, then you'll want to check out a new article over at soundtracks.net entitled, "Prey: Videogame Music Finally Grows Up". This article goes into detail on several aspects of the music in Prey, which was authored by Jeremy & Julian Soule. Here's some tidbits from the article, which is definitely written for someone who is heavily into music, and in particular soundtracks.

"Prey is destined to effect industry-wide change: from defining a new standard by which music commissions for flagship interactive titles can be judged, to sounding a welcome death knell for the use of through-composed material. It is a key milestone and one that is the culmination of a decade's work spent to bring the true sound of Hollywood into the home."

Scott Miller, 3D Realms' CEO, acknowledges that the importance of Jeremy's contribution to Prey is a testament to their shared vision, "It was a fantastic stroke of luck that Jeremy was coming off of the back of another project and was able to sit-down with us and bring to the game that level of Hollywood excellence he's renowned for. We had felt that it'd be very difficult to get him, but he was so enthused about the project from the moment we approached him, so in-tune with our needs that he ended up coming on-board straight away."

In this latter vein, the game owes much to Julian's co-composing sensibilities, who points out that "working on Prey was very much like scoring a whole season of a network drama in a few weeks. Thankfully, though, we didn't have to deal with constantly moving goalposts because everyone involved had a clear sense of direction from the start."

Finally, don't forget that you can purchase the soundtracks to Prey right now over at Direct Song's Website. You don't have to wait for the full game to come out to hear all the music. Here's what the article above says about the soundtrack:

"With ardent PC and Xbox 360 gamers chomping at the byte for Prey's arrival, two volumes of music featuring Jeremy and Julian's soundtrack have been released in advance of the game's summer debut. Prey - Volume 1 and, unsurprisingly, Volume 2 showcase almost 145 minutes of courageous and thrilling music.

The albums are available exclusively for download at DirectSong.com, the gaming industry's leading music portal. Whilst you'll require Windows Media Player (version 7.1 upwards) to play the music and transfer it between devices (the tracks have built-in DRM), DirectSong must be applauded for offering their content at 320kbps - as close to the rawness of CD quality audio available today via digital distribution and surely a kick in the teeth for their competition."

And finally, for reading through this story, you get another chance to win a free copy of Prey. The soundtrack.net website is giving away five copies of Prey. Head over to their contest page to enter!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 5:10 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #24 - Final Edition

Today we're bringing you the final edition of the Apogee Legacy Interview Series. As this was put together by Joe Siegler, we'll let him talk about the conclusion to the series.

"It's a bit of a sad moment, as this series has been a lot of fun to put together. Apogee has a rich history, being involved in some capacity in over 70 titles in our 19 year history now. I've been here for a long time myself, having seen the majority of these games get released. When Scott Miller originally came up with this idea, I wasn't terribly sure how well it would work, because a lot of the people we spoke with for this series either haven't kept in touch, or we lost track of them, etc, etc, etc... But it worked out well. Managed to reconnect with some folks, including a couple we haven't spoken with as a company in over a decade.

Yes, this is the final edition. It is not the normal edition, as this one is a summary, and has some recollections by folks of the two people who have worked here who have since died; William Scarboro & Dennis Scarff. So let's get onto the final edition."

Of all the people who have worked here (and there's been a lot), we're fortunate that (to our knowledge anyway), they're all still alive. So far only two folks who have worked here have since died. We want to take this time in the final edition of the series to commemorate them.

First up is Dennis Scarff. Dennis is not a name known to most people, because he was not a developer. Dennis took care of some of the business side of things for a few years in the mid 90's. If you look in our older shareware from the late 80's and early 90's, you'll see a lot of them have a listing of foreign retailers, and things of that nature. It was quite hapzardly done (compared to today's standards), and after a time, it was decided we needed someone to coordinate all of that. So Dennis was hired. Dennis was in charge of handling all shareware requests, as well as keeping track of foreign retailers, making sure they paid the royalty money they owed our company, things of that nature. As was said before, he wasn't really known to the public, but he played an integral part of our business side of things at the time.

He was also a tech nerd, although from a previous generation. Dennis was huge into Ham radio, and had all kinds of ham equipment and books in his office. He kept talking about how we all should participate in that. He was also likely to be found in all the local Radio Shack stores looking for parts, and he frequented several of the mom & pop computer stores in the area.

One funny story about Dennis recalled by Joe Siegler..

"As was said, Dennis was always into gadgety type of things. One time when the Dallas Stars first located here from Minnesota, several of us attended a game, including Dennis. In between periods, the Stars would fly this radio control blimp around the arena, and Dennis claimed that it would be easy enough to scan for the frequency of the thing and take control of it himself. He never did that, but it would have been amusing to see him try. Outside of work, that's the kind of thing he was always known for. He always had some parts catalog around, some phone thing, was a great guy. I miss him.

Tom Hall also remembers Dennis.

"Dennis was like the kind ol' grandpa of the company. Always there with a smile, a nod, a reassuring presence. A good fella."

Scott Miller recalls the original hiring of Dennis, and the reason why we eventually parted company:

Scarff was hired from a shareware catalog, the biggest of its type, called Public Brand Software, which was a huge catalog in the early eighties. Scarff was a big Apogee fan, and at the time we need someone to deal with all of the shareware outlets that helped drive our business at the time. But as the 90's moved forward, shareware catalogs and BBSs were replaced in importance by the Internet and the web. So, around 1996 or so we released him.

As was said above, Dennis was not as well known to the public, but to those of us who worked here when he was at Apogee, his is a name that is remembered fondly. It was with great sadness that we found out later he had passed away (via email from his widow).

Here's a few pictures of Dennis around the office.

---

Second up is William Scarboro. William is far more known to the public than Dennis was, as William was one of the major folks on our Rise of the Triad project, as well as being the original lead programmer and engine designer on Prey. William died on Aug 9, 2002 of an asthma attack. It was quite sad actually, as we're told he died alone (likely in pain due to the way he died), and wasn't found for a few days after he had passed. But his life was one of fun and passion, and that's the way he's remembered. In fact, most people who knew him will remember him as this photo portrays him, as it pretty much summed him up..

Tom Hall (id, Ion Storm, Midway, etc) recalls Wiliam:

"William was a completely unique character. He was always good for a laugh. He'd describe an event in some crazy anime he'd seen, and then say, "Dude! That's ridiculous!" He'd have his little bag with his tuna/pasta/salsa/Omega 3 fatty acid bowls. He'd wear his odd American Male shirts on his muscle-bound frame, and talk about "chicks". He made the weapons in Rise of the Triad "insanely rockful". One day, he was so into typing code he didn't see the big turtle we set next to him for two minutes. So many little stories. He is missed."

When asked to elaborate on 'The turtle story', Tom replied with this..

Looking a bit sunburnt in a non standard white T-Shirt

"Heh, yeah, he was referring to a document or book two feet to his left. In between the two were two thick books stacked up. So he'd type, refer, type, refer.... Scott almost ran over a turtle, so he picked it up to get it out of the road and take it to water, but he thought he'd bring it in the office. We decided to surprise William with it, so we placed it on those stacked books. He kept turning to the reference, back to the computer, and so on for awhile. Obviously his brain registered "TURTLE!" and threw it out as bad information. Finally he turned and jumped back, his brain finally registering it as really there. :) "

Fellow Rise of the Triad programmer Mark Dochtermann (later Ritual, now EA) also recalls William:

"William Scarboro had uncanny way of boiling the world down into black and white. He either liked something or hated it, he desired it or pushed it away. His desire to classify his world into two absolute states made him a very passionate engineer. When he was into the work that he was doing, he was unstoppable."

Scott Miller (Apogee founder) also touches upon the original hiring of William, as well as his connection to Prey both old school and modern.

A rarity - William in a Tuxedo!

"William Scarboro was one of the first two or three actual developers (a coder) we hired in 1994 when we first shifted to internal development. Up until that time, we had solely worked with external teams, like Id Software and many others. He was hired to help develop an Id-approved sequel to Wolfenstein 3-D, which later became a non-Id game, Rise of the Triad. For the first year William worked here, he wore many shirts of many colors, but soon shifted to an all-black-shirt wardrobe. Made buying shirts easy, I suppose! But this became his signature look for all the remaining years I knew him.

William eventually became the lead coder on Prey, leading development of the Prey portal engine, and just as significantly, the Prey editor, called Preditor internally. At the time, this editor was a significant improvement over any previous 3D game editor we'd seen, and Remedy even used it as the template for their very similar Max Payne editor.

It's a shame that the original Prey project didn't reach escape velocity, and for many reasons it eventually ended. William moved on and away from the game industry, somewhat burnt out and looking for a more sane job. That was the last I saw of him, and two or so years later I heard he had tragically died due to an asthma attack.

William was also one of the industry's hardest, most dedicated workers, and we were proud to dedicate the new Prey to his memory."

Finally, Joe Siegler chimes in on William:

This is quite hard to write, as William was a good friend of mine, and it quite bothered me when I got an email from a (then) co-worker of his that he had died. While we were grateful for the update, we were not happy with the contents. As was said by the others here, William was quite the character. He could be completely into himself with his work, or be completely out there with his humour. One of the things that William an I shared was a case of the giggles. After we had been working together for awhile, there were certain catchphrases we were able to say to each other to set the other one off. One was "Uhhh.... 27?" which was a reference to a Beavis & Butthead episode where Butthead was trying to pass himself off as 27 years old. The other I can't recall right at the moment, but after those had been going on for awhile, it got so all we had to do was look at the other for more than a second or two, and we'd bust out laughing. That kind of friendship is hard to find. William & I attended a few concerts together. One was the tour that Van Halen did with Gary Cherone (which was better than it's reputation gave it), and the other was the tour that Motley Crue did John Corabi as vocalist. William was always on a quest to tour Europe where sex laws were not as uh, "strict" as they are in the US, not sure if he actually pulled that off or not. :)

Anyway, here's something I wrote about William back in January of 2006 when I was looking for pictures of other former developers at the start of this series. I found a picture of WIlliam I had forgotten about, and it inspired me to write this:

-- Start Story --

Every time I see a picture of him, I get sad. It's still depressing to find out the way he went. I also recently found out additional information about his passing. I had run across the original email I got from a (then) current co-worker of his informing me that he had died. I wrote back to him and asked what exactly William was doing when he died, as it occurred to me I didn't actually know that, all I knew was "not in the games industry". Here's what I was told..

Joe Siegler, William Scarboro, & Stephen Cole at E3 1998.

"RIA provides Income Tax solutions for Corporations, Accounting firms and CPAs. He was part of the Platform Technology Group. This group was responsible for core backend services for computing and printing tax returns. It involved a lot of hard core c++ skills. He was very integral to the group and will be sorely missed."

I also found out that the folks at RIA had gotten concerned when he hadn't shown up for work for a couple of days. Apparently his mother also was concerned as well, and she eventually went to his apartment, and it was his mother who found him dead - terribly sad info.

Anyway, I miss my old buddy, and I wanted to say finding some "new" pictures (or at least ones I forgot about) was a nice treat. Wish you were still around, pal.

-- End Story --

A nickname we had for William at the time was "Da Hur" (as in the whore). All this sounds odd, but if you knew William, it would make more sense. :) Miss ya buddy.

Here's a few pictures of William from around the office:

---

We're fortunate that with so many folks we've worked with over the years that so few of them have passed on. There's some that just seem to have up and disappeared off the face of the Earth. Take for example Todd Replogle. Todd is well known as the programmer behind the first three Duke Nukem games, as well as Cosmo, and some others from the ancient days of our company. The last anyone from here heard, Todd was living in the backwoods of the state of Oregon. We heard a rumour that he had turned his money into PVC Pipe and buried it in his back yard. Whether that's true or not, he hasn't been heard from in years, and no one from 3DR has any idea how to contact him. We tried, as we wanted him in this series, but he was unreachable.

We tried getting a hold of some other folks for this series but couldn't. Duke 3D Atomic Edition producer Greg Malone was last heard of being a teacher in Arizona. Bobby Prince did briefly reply when we initially sent out the queries back in December of 2005, but hasn't been heard from since. Some others just declined to participate.

Some of the folks we did get to participate were not easy to track down. Peder Jungck was someone we hadn't spoken to in almost a decade, and was found via Google. Mike Voss was tracked down via another game developer. Lindsay Whipp was difficult, had to go through Google, to find some dead ends, we finally got a hold of him via someone at Wildfire in Australia, who had his email. Jason Blochowiak was difficult, as we had to track him down via a few other former employees. Most of them had him working at Midway Chicago, but a phone call to their receptionist said he wasn't there, we lucked out that someone knew where he went. One of the more interesting ones was Dave Sharpless. Since Dave had a game that was put out over 15 years ago, none of us had much (if any) contact with him in the interim. He was eventually tracked down when Matt at the Jumpman Lounge was kind enough to put us in contact with Dave.

Additionally, we do get quite a few queries about Lee Jackson, so I thought I'd take a moment to answer folks who want to know what's going on. He's doing fine, and after he and 3DR parted company in 2002, he briefly applied at another game company, but decided for a complete change of direction with his life. He went to a Radio broadcaster's school, and now holds a job with a firm in Dallas that does the traffic reporting for several radio stations in the Dallas area, including the big news station KRLD. This company also does reports for Sirius Satellite Radio, so if you have them, and hear a familiar voice, it's Lee Jackson. It's still amusing to me personally to hear "This is Lee Jackson in the KRLD traffic command center" coming over my radio.

So it was fun tracking down all these guys and gals, and it was a blast putting all this together. It's sad that the series is now ending, as it's been a blast going down memory lane these last six months the series has ran.

If need be, we might have special editions of the series in the future, should we make contact with someone who would be a good addition, but this was the final scheduled edition of this series. Thanks for sharing the trip down memory lane with us! This series went on far longer than we thought, and thanks to all who participated, and thank YOU for reading it.

So this ends the series. It's been nice looking backwards at our company, but now it's time to go forwards. The Prey demo is out, the full version will be out soon, so there's great, cool new stuff for you to look forward to.

That's all, folks!

P.S A special prayer goes out to Dennis & William - sorry we couldn't ask you guys directly about this series, it would have been nice to still have y'all around and contribute.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:18 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Official Prey Servers

On Friday, we told you about several official Prey Demo Deathmatch servers available. Well there's more now, and we wanted to tell you about them.

"Official Prey Server 1 [NSI Hosting]".
"Official Prey Server 2 [NSI Hosting]".

There are also some official servers at Human Head. They can be found with this nomenclature:

"Official Human Head Server #1"
"Official Human Head Server #2"
"Official Human Head Server #3"
"Official Human Head Server #4"

There was a server up over the weekend called "Human Head Demo Server" - this server has been removed.

If you'd like to read it, here is the original notification remark from Human Head last Thursday:

The response to the Prey release last night has been phenomenal. We are glad that y'all seem to like the game so much. We have had requests for Official Human Head & 3D Realms servers. While we're looking into it at 3DR, Human Head does have some servers set up now. We got a message from Tim G at Human Head about this situation:

"The server is up at 8.15.1.15:27719, and also in the main server list as "Official Prey Server 1 [NSI Hosting]".

Since that email, there is an Official Prey Server to go with this, as well as a server at Human Head HQ named surprisingly enough "Human Head Demo Server". :)

If/when we get more Official HH/3DR servers online, we'll be sure to bring you that information as well. A special thanks goes out to Kirt Senser at NSI Hosting who has helped out in getting all this going.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 11:15 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Collector's Edition Box Art & A Dedication

A few days back we posted the final box art for both the PC & Xbox 360 versions of Prey. Today we're here to bring you what the final version of the Limited Collector's Edition box arts look like. As you may remember, the LCE comes with not just the game, but some extra goodies. A couple of pewter figures, a booklet on the Art of Prey, and other cool stuff. This all comes in a cool metal box, so here's what you'll see when you get your copy.

If you haven't pre-ordered yours, we've recently expanded the pre-order program that is available in North America & Canada with additional outlets to pre-order from. Remember, if you pre-order you get the third pewter figure (Mutate) as well, so if you're interested in all the figures, pre-ordering the LCE is something you're going to want to do. You can check out the full details of the pre-order program on our site here.

Finally, now that Prey is out, we wanted to take this moment to remember a fallen comrade, William Scarboro. William was one of the orginal Prey team back in 1995, he worked here on Rise of the Triad as well. Unfortunately, and quite sadly, William died in August of 2002 of an asthma attack. It is to my great pleasure that he is remembered 11 years later upon the release of Prey, as the entire game has been dedicated to William, Prey's original lead programmer. If you've run through the credits of the demo already, you will have seen the dedication already, but if you haven't, here's what it looks like.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:00 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

New Tim Gerritsen Interview

Now that Prey is out, the interviews about it can change slightly, since Human Head and 3DR don't have to be so guarded in what they say. The website Eurogamer has a new interview up today with Tim Gerritsen of Human Head. Tim talks about several things, including the origins of certain game ideas, why only Deathmatch & Team DM in the game, and other issues along these lines. Here's a few quotes from the article:

Eurogamer: Why are there only deathmatch and team deathmatch modes? Why not capture the flag, or something more original?

Tim Gerritson: Prey is predominantly a single player game, and we didn't want to divide our focus by trying to add on a ton of half-baked modes to multiplay. Instead we decided to focus on making Deathmatch and doing it right. We reasoned that if we did a good deathmatch mode and got it right, and released the editor and SDK, we'd be in a far better position to create or support new modes down the road.

Eurogamer: How does the anti-gravity element of the gameplay affect the way multiplayer matches play out?

Tim Gerritson: It's not really anti-gravity so much as different gravity, and it's the key to why our multiplayer is fun. By throwing out the typical rules of gravity, we created multiplayer situations where you really have to be thinking and reacting at all times.

Eurogamer: The PC demo has just been released? What can players expect from it?

Tim Gerritson: It's a fairly large demo. Not necessarily in terms of size, since it clocks in at about what most demos do these days, but in terms of how much content. We've shipped with two multiplayer maps and the first five levels of the game. You get to see a fair bit of the game in action to get a feel for it.

If you buy the full game, though, the demo save games work with the final version of the game (at least on PC) so that you don't have to replay sections if you don't like.

There's a lot more Tim has to say, so head over to Eurogamer today and read the full interview.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 11:49 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Demo is available!

Short. Sweet. The Prey demo for the PC is out! Go get it!

Our downloads page will be updated through the day with more links as we get them. You can get to our downloads page here:

http://legacy.3drealms.com/prey/download.html

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:10 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

Update on Prey Demo for Xbox 360

Here's a quick message from our forums, posted by 3DR president George Broussard about availability of the Prey 360 Demo.

We do not want 360 people waiting up for the demo or having false expectations. The 360 demo will not appear on Marketplace tonight.

I'm still waiting for specifcs, but I'm being told that it's still in testing at Microsoft. From what I understand this isn't Microsoft's fault, and is more likely just an issue of timing.

I'm hesitant to give any estimates for a release, but I've been told it should be reasonably soon after the PC release, but could be as long as a few days.

We will post an update as soon as we have more solid information.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 9:22 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Exclusive Gamespot Demo Preview Video Available

As we count down the hours till the Prey release later tonight, we wanted to make you aware of an exclusive new video just posted over at the Gamespot site. Available here now, this video, totaling 10 minutes and 48 seconds is an interview with Chris Rhinehart of Human Head.

In it, Chris talks about various aspects of the Prey Demo, and the thoughts that went behind various aspects of designing the demo. Chris shows off some of the game play in the demo itself, running through a few parts of it. Chris goes into some of the weapons in the demo, and how Tommy acclimates himself to the Alien environment. Chris also talks about how the authentic Cherokee nature of the character impacts the game.

This is a new video, it hasn't been posted before, and is only available at Gamespot. So head on over there to check it out right now. Although, some of the stuff Chris talks about is spoilerish for the demo, too - so be warned. :) But Chris does go into detail on various modes of the game, and it's nice to hear from the game's developer the thoughts behind some of the various modes.

Come back later tonight for the long awaited Prey demo!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 5:20 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Demo Almost Here!

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the Prey demo will be available this coming Thursday. It's a moment that is both exciting for us, as it's a major point in the completion of the game. It's also scary as it's that moment where you always wonder "will they like it?" Anyway, the demo will world premiere at Gamespot on Thursday the 22nd at 12:01AM EST. (That's -5 GMT for those of us not in the US).

Gamespot will have the demo first, so if you want it the fastest, you should check out the Gamespot Prey demo page by clicking on the graphic below.

Now Gamespot won't be the only place to get the demo, but they will be the first, and will be ready immediately upon the game's release Thursday morning. We will have a list of alternate download sites available once the game is out, please check back after the Gamespot premiere for further details.

While you wait these last few hours for the Prey demo, we have a review of the Prey Demo for you to read. The site Firing Squad has posted a preview of the Prey Demo. Here's a quote from them about their preview:

This article will give you some impressions of the single player demo along with what is contained in the multiplayer portion as well (two deathmatch-team deathmatch levels will also be included). Since everyone else will get to play this demo very soon I will not be giving away everything I saw or did in the demo version, and the screenshots of the demo that accompany this preview only show the first two of the five levels in the demo. We'd rather not spoil all the fun.

Their preview does give away bits of what you see in the demo, so at this point with less than two days to go until you can check out the demo yourself, if you want to remain totally unspoiled, you may wish to skip the preview. For those who don't care about that, then by all means check it out. They do have this to say about the demo overall, though:

If the rest of Prey's single player campaign is as entertaining and unique as the demo's first five levels, the long, long wait for this title may be worth it.

And finally, you'll want to check out these images. They're the final revision of the box art for Prey for the PC (standard version) & the Xbox 360. These will differ a little from what you see in the stores, as the one on your store shelf will have quotes from reviews of the games, but those have not been included here. Otherwise, these are what you'll see in the store.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:24 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Demo Poll

Short story. There's a poll up on Voodoo Extreme this week about Prey. In short it asks this:

Will you be checking out the Prey demo this week?

Head on over there and vote!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:58 PM

Xbox 360 Achievement List for Prey Posted

If you have an Xbox 360, then you are familiar with the concept of achievements. On the 360, the achievement system is a way to gain points for your gamerscore. Each game has them and you can get either 200 or 1000 total points, depending on what kind of game it is (regular vs. XBLA). If you'd like to read more about achievements, you can do so over on this page at Xbox.com.

With the Prey release right around the corner, we thought we'd bring you some information about the achievements in the Xbox 360 version of Prey. Here's a breakdown of some of the points for the game:

• 44 total achievements
• Single player points total: 655
• Multiplayer points total: 250
• Secret points total: 30
• Hard mode points total: 65
• 1000 total gamertag points possible

There are three secrets that are not on the list, though. These three are a secret, you'll have to find out what those are on your own by playing the game.

Please note that this achievement list is for the full version of Prey. As such, some things are in this chart that are most definitely spoilers for the full game. If you do not want the game spoiled for you, you probably should not read through this list until after you've played the full version of Prey.

Having said that, if you're interested in checking out the list of achievements, you can do so on this page here on our website.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:32 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #23 - Paul Schuytema

Today we bring you the final "new" issue in the Apogee Legacy series. This edition is definitely one of the more unusual ones, and with the Prey demo being released this Thursday the 22nd, a timely one as well.

This week's edition is with Paul Schuytema. Paul was with 3D Realms for a couple of years in the mid - late 1990's as the project lead on Prey. Now what makes this unusual is that Prey was not released when Paul was here, so his insights into things are not the same as what they would be for someone who has published a game through us.

Still, with Prey on the horizon, and having covered Prey's original project lead (Tom Hall) earlier in the series, we figured we might as well hit Paul up too, and he was glad to send in his answers. Suprisingly for someone who didn't technically put out a game with us, he has a lot to say, so make sure and check it all out.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I first came to know Apogee from their games.. publishing Wolfenstein and Blake Stone and then ROTT.I was working as the game design editor for Computer Gaming World Magazine when I was sent down to Dallas on assignment to cover Duke Nukem 3D before it was released-it was so obvious from looking at that game that it would be a HUGE hit. I remember sitting in his office and asking George: "So how does it feel to KNOW you have a monster hit on your hands?"

I then worked with them to create a feature for CGW on editing in the Build engine. At the time, I was teaching at Monmouth college and we modeled the student center in the engine-it was a ball.deathmatching with my students through the campus union!

Paul Schuytema's as artwork

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

3D Realms lured me away from FASA Interactive. I was working as the lead designer on MechWarrior 3 and Scott Miller approached me about being the project leader on Prey. While I loved the MechWarrior universe and working on the Mech game, the chance to help grow our own game universe and flesh out a deep and interesting game character was too good to pass up.

In the "small world" category…when I left FASA, my producer was Tim Gerritsen…who went on to found Human Head. We became good friends during my time at 3DR and now his team will be the one that allows Prey to see the light of day.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Since Prey wasn't released when I was there, I can't really answer that question. I do have plenty of hindsight, though, on what we could have done better with the game and technology; as they say, hindsight is 20-20!

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

N/A

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Since leaving, I've had the chance to create games in which we retained no rights at all and some in which we retained nearly all the rights. I think it depends on the game. The honest truth, though, is that whomever bankrolls the project should probably control the majority of the rights, since they are the chief risk-taker.

In a perfect world, a developer would be able to self-fund up to a prototype state and then partner with a publisher for completion and distribution and then retain the major IP rights. The real trick, though, is having the capitol to fund that prototype. That's not a trivial feat to pull off!

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

For the games we've done as Magic Lantern, it's clearly a benefit to own our own IP - it gives us some freedom in putting together distribution deals to maximize our potential return.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

N/A

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Yowza... there are so many! Four big ones stand out:

- the first time we showed of portal technology at E3- the gulp of amazement from those who saw it was a real rush for the whole team!

-our team design meetings when we would work on alien race cultures for Prey- the team really came together, time and time again, and we were able to take blue-sky ideas and reel them into nuggets that would fit in the context of an action game

-our team trek to see KMFDM (who was then doing the soundtrack for Prey) in Austin - they were paired with Rammstein, from Germany, and the show was intense and we got to hang out with the band back stage. [ Ed Note: There are still pictures of this event online here. ]

-my last E3 with 3D Realms - for just a few demos, we had a real trick up our sleeve - we did the demo for the press and talked a lot about cool multiplayer stuff and then for a few (I think we only did it two or three times), we had the press sit down and we spun a computer screen towards them and showed them that we could deathmatch right there - that there was game play in addition to the demo - that really wowed them!

Paul in the back room demo area for Prey at E3 1998

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Every publisher wants to mitigate their risk and taking a chance on a smaller or lesser-known team isn't they way to do that. That's a shame, because it's in those smaller studios that you'll find the real centers of game play innovation.

Also, the idea of mentoring is almost non-existent, which is a shame. Without mentors, small studios are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past - with mentoring, they can grow and flourish. I remember being on hand when Scott and George started their relationship with Remedy, and I was really impressed with how they coached and helped Remedy get started as they began work on Max Payne - it was something really special.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

The consoles have really taken over and everything is "bigger, better, faster, more!" It's very, very hard for small studios, especially US-based studios (where labor costs are high as compared to overseas), to thrive. Also, since so much is ruled by so few, and all the triple-A games need to be multi-platform out of the gates, the barrier for entry is so high as to be almost impossible. Gone are the days when a great idea and a willingness to dive in and learn and work your butt off in your basement will allow you to start a game company - and that's kind of sad.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

I started Magic Lantern (insert shameless plug: http://www.lanterngames.com) in 1999 and since then, I produced and designed 20+ games, from the casual to the hard-core (including a hand in one of the early Rainbow Six games). We did this in the cornfields of rural Illinois, and along the way, became very involved in community and economic development.

Late last year, I "turned the asylum over to the inmates" and started a new career with the University of Illinois. Now I work to make games and simulations to support faculty research - really a dream job for me, since I was in academia before I jumped into the game industry.

At 3DR HQ around October 1997.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

So far, the grass is pretty green around the ivory tower and I'm making games right now - maybe ask me again in a few years!

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Honestly, I think we maybe spent too much time living in the now-defunct world of Glide (3DFX's 3D accelerator API) before we jumped to Direct X - we should have made that leap sooner, but of course, that's hindsight talking!

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke Nukem 3D, hands-down. The intensity of the multiplayer action was something I had never experienced before, and the laser trip bombs were just genius!

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

My all-time favorite is the Age of Empires series - the blend of tactical combat with world building and a real historical feel made the whole series incredible.

I also logged way too much time with the first 3D Jedi Knight game - the poly count was low, the characters looked goofy (by today's standards) and the textures were chunky, but the game play and the sense of scale is still unmatched - and the boss battles rank as the best I've ever played.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

During the time I was at 3DR, the industry was really coming into its own - the PC was still the big kid on the block and 3D acceleration was just starting out - and middleware was just becoming an option - it was very exciting to see so much change - but it was also a spooky time in which you had to guess on which API to support and what system specs to target. Did you use MMX? Glide? Direct X? What sound API?

It was also a time of great variety - there were big players in the market, but also small studios were thriving and the game spectrum was very wide indeed - there was so much to play and so little time, we were crafting our own game, after all!

---

A special thanks goes out to Paul for answering the questions. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what he'd say when approached, but he was glad to help out.

• Our Prey Page
• Official 2K Prey Home Page
• Prey Page on Wikipedia
• Lantern Games Home Page

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the final edition in the Legacy Interview Series. The final edition will be a series wrapup with highlights from the rest of the series, and a tribute to two former 3D Realms employees who have since died.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:50 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Weekly Update #22

And we're back. Apologies for missing last week. Things were pretty busy leading up to Friday and I wasn't going to be able to write the update on time.

But I'm back this week and writing this early. Very early. Right now, it's 2:30 in the morning and I just woke up. Admittedly, I'm still rather tired, so apologies in advance if this update is a bit rambly. No, I'm not in some crazy crunch mode right now. I just have to be up early to catch a plane to Dallas.

So what has been going on lately in the world of Prey and at Human Head? A ton of stuff. Mainly, we've been playing the PC and 360 versions, as well as tweaking the 360 demo (the PC demo was wrapped up a bit ago). Time is getting tight with this, since the demo will be released next week.

That's right. The Prey demo is going to be released in less than a week. Are we nervous here at Human Head? Yeah, admittedly a bit. But mostly we're excited to finally unleash the game we've been working on for the past five years.

Although a bit of history about those five years: Technically, yes it's been five years as we signed the project in May of 2001. But, we didn't actually get the Doom 3 code until fall of that year, so the first few months were all design work. When we received the Doom 3 code, there was a huge shift in learning the new tech.

Then there a pretty big Design Apocalypse around 2003 where we threw out a lot of stuff and started from scratch. Not the most efficient way to develop (and I would prefer to avoid so much wasted work in the future) but in the end it was a huge learning experience that paid off as the game turned out great. Of course, I'm just the slightest bit biased.

Anyway, back to the present: Things are starting to slow down a bit at Human Head. We're still busy, but a few people are done with their Prey tasks and have been taking their end-of-project vacations, and others have started some research/learning projects in between testing Prey.

Some of the level designers have been creating new DeathMatch levels for the game. They've been working on some new looks as well as creating some levels that are better designed for one-on-one battles (most of the levels in Prey are designed to work well with 4-8 people, although a some also function pretty well with fewer than four players). We don't have an ETA when these maps will be available. They've just started on them and aren't at the testing phase yet.

Next week, I'm headed out to San Francisco and Los Angeles for a Prey PR tour. The demo we'll show during the tour consists of about 40 minutes of gameplay from various parts of Prey (showing both PC and 360 versions). I'm looking forward to it -- especially since I'll be showing off some areas never before shown to the press. Should be a pretty interesting trip.

Speaking of trips, I see now that I need to get ready as my flight leaves in only a couple of hours.

Remember: Next week the Prey demo is released. Grab it, play it, and comment on it. I'm very much looking forward to what everyone has to say.

Until next week...stay out of trouble.

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

Additionally, if you are a gaming news website, and wish to be updated directly with notification of these updates, please email us with a link to your website and a request to be added, and we'll email you with the next update.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 10:56 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

Interview with Scott Miller

The website gameproducer.net has a new interview up with Scott Miller. In it, Scott talks briefly talks about the early days of the company, some Max Payne production issues, and of course a lot of Prey talk. Here's a few quotes:

GameProducer.net: In one of the game journal entries you mention that SpiritWalking is one of the key features of the game, what kind of feature is that?

Scott Miller: Spirit walking is a gameplay feature rooted to true Native American methology, where a shaman of sufficient power can astral project himself beyond his physical self. This feature is one of the reason we selected a Cherokee protagonist, as the rich mythology of Cherokee culture lends itself to many such inherently credible gameplay hooks.

GameProducer.net: One of the key factors of 3D Realms game production is independency. Can you tell us what independent game development means for a company like 3D Realms?

Scott Miller: I sort of answered this in the previous question. By being independent, we can make sure our games are done right, and that rewards us far more completely than a dozen half-way done right games. Also, by being independent, we can chose projects to pursue that have the correct story, character and gameplay hooks to insure their success. This is as important as anything to us, because without getting this part right, even superb execution and endless financing cannot bring success.

To check out the full interview, head over to Gameproducer.net now.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 11:24 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #22 - The Levelord

As we wind down the Apogee Legacy series (click here for schedule), we will be bringing you some slightly different choices to wrap up the series. Today we are bringing you a mini interview with none othre than the Levelord himself, Richard Gray! The reason why we're calling it a mini interview will be self evident shortly.

Richard worked here back in the Duke Nukem 3D days, and left with some others who were working here at the time to found what would be come Ritual. Rich has remained friendly over the years with us, and we get together from time to time and chew over the old days, talk about what's going on with our companies now, etc, etc, etc.

As Rich was an important part of one of our most important projects (Duke Nukem 3D), we wanted to get his input in this series. However, Rich being Rich, he didn't answer all the questions. So we'll bring you an abbreviated interview with him. He answers some of the questions, but definitely not all. We'll flesh this one out with some pictures from the archives of him. :)

So here goes:

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I had made some levels for DOOM back in 1994 and uploaded them to CompuServe. They were good enough to catch the eye of Nick Newhard, then with Q Studios. He contracted me to do levels for Blood. Both my DOOM levels and Blood caught the attention of George Broussard. He soon asked me to come to Garland, Texas to work fulltime on Duke Nukem 3D.

Levelord at our 1995 Halloween Party

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

I would have worked at ANY game company, and would have cleaned the bathroom floors with a toothpick, for free, just to get into the industry ;) I was also being offered a job at Q Studios, but I chose Apogee because it was so close to id Software. Just seemed important at the time. This was late 1994 and there were only a few game companies making FPSs.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Better, because the Duke Nukem 3D Team was a great one! I also give credit to the technology of the times. Today, I spend more than half my time wrestling with technology. Everything has gotten so complicated and complex. Back then, a decade ago, everything was so much easier to deal with and I spent much more time on the Fun Factor and polish.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Although I was an internal employee, I would say this holds true for my experience. I was allowed almost free reins on my levels. This gave me creative freedom, and this gave the entire team creative freedom. When asking about retaining IP rights, I must add consideration for ownership and future endeavors with a property. Retaining creative freedom, as related to an IP, is always good. Financial ownership is another thing.

Chowing down at the 3DR Offices

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Yes, going to my very first E3 in 1996 with the Duke Team. It was the first E3, so that made it memorable. I had lived in Los Angeles from 1980-1990. I lived only a few blocks away from the Nakatomi building in the first Die Hard movie. I lived in the garage of my parents while going to UCLA. Late one night, at about 2am, they started filming much of the exterior helicopter stuff at the end of the movie. I thought it was a real event ;)

Anyhow, that AM/PM store is right there, where the cop bought the Twinkies for his pregnant wife. This store, being so close to home, was just a regular old store to buy smokes and gas. To most others, though, it was an icon. First thing we did at E3 was go to this store and buy Twinkies ;)

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Trust, and there always seems to be fingers on "the other side". Most external involvement entails external influence, creative influence. It is understandable, putting money into something, a lot of money, and wanting control and oversight. However, my experience is that if you sign-up to have a group of professionals perform a task, you should trust them to complete the task. I always use the metaphor of hiring a caterer and then insisting on being in the kitchen and deciding on my own list of spices and cooking times and such.

---

As you can see, Rich didn't answer most of the questions, he probably got distracted by a picture of boobs or something at the time. So, I'm going to plunder his website for a few funny stories, and go through our own archives for pictures of him.

At 3DR HQ watching a Duke3D demo the night before release. L-R: George Broussard, Doug Wood, Joe Siegler, Allen Blum, Terry Nagy, Dirk Jones, Jim Dose (obscured), Chuck Jones, Levelord

April 24, 1998:

Rich talks about "The Levelord Drinking Game" Joe Siegler invented for our semi-regular trips to the Outback Steakhouse..

"The Levelord Drinking Game"? Okay, I'm in ;) I bet we could make a pretty penny with the travel version. Seriously, you're a funny man, Joe... ...that's why I keeel you laaaast!... ...just in case any are taking this seriously, Master Siegler and I meet at the Outback Steakhouse in Mesquite every few months. He goes for the Bloomin' Onions and I... ...well, let's just say I get very pedophilic with all the high school waitresses and their short, short little skirts showing just a hint of flowery panties underneath and their amply round melon-sized boobs bouncing up and... ...or dear, ...that's two drinks for me!

September 22, 1999:

Rich talks about the advances of gaming tech and Duke Nukem 3D:

I'm so tired of chasing technology! Cutting-edge and special effects have become horrible phrases for me. We spend so much time and effort "getting up" and not enough "going", and for an old fart like me, it just gets tiring.

Keep in mind that I've been in software since before there were floppies. Platter "hard" drives stored a whopping 128k and programming was down on card readers and hoppers. Anyone else remember their Hollerith code and EBCDIC? I remember being in the Navy, dabbling in FORTRAN, and seeing the DPs carefully walking down the halls holding 8" floppies, when they first came out, like some precious serving tray. They were afraid the bits would get jumbled if the floppies got jarred in any way.

I am so completely convinced that we could release Duke Nukem 3D right now and it would still sell as many copies and be as popular.

February 8, 1998:

Rich remembers (or tries to, it seems like a rambling piece) on Allen Blum, Megadeth, & Duke Nukem 3D:

...Well, it's early Sunday morning, got the stereo blasting away, freshing toasted (toast is so much more crisp when your lungs aren't coated with tobacco smoke;), and cranking on some levels in our new office space. This is way cool, apart from the new space being "new", we were crammed like Bismarck Herrings in the old office. I even have enough room to crack my 16-foot bullwhip! ...hey, man, ...it's Texas, ...live it, ...love it!

Speaking of stereos blasting, I've got MegaDeath's latest blaring (ya, ya, it's a 97 release, but remember how old and slow I am!) and just noticed the title of the 7th track... ...Sin! Yes boys, play it loud please! MegaDeath will ALWAYS remind me of 18-hour stretches of Duke leveling and Allen The Third Blum playing "Youthanasia" thirteen times in a row... ...bless his demented little heart. Dave Mustaine... ...hmmmm, you don't supposed, do you, that Tom has an alter profession like that sCary Spice bitch (how ya doin' BTW, Steve)?

March 10, 1995:

Rich recalls his 10 year anniversary of coming to work for 3D Realms:

Holy sheep shit! (picture is at 3D Realms in March of 1995)

It was ten years ago today when I first rolled into Garland, Texas to start working on Duke Nukem at 3D Realms!

It has definitely been a decade that seems to have gone by quickly (probably due to the time warped perspective of growing older), but it also seems like a LOOOOONG time when I try to remember all the things that have happened in ten years.

The question for me? Would I do it again if I knew back then what I know now? It is a question for me, ...even with all the ultracool things I have gained and enjoyed on the ride, ...it was a truly rough road to travel!

April 20, 2000:

And finally, this one where his Loness writes this about Duke Nukem and 3D Realms:

...and finally, I am really starting to regret leaving Garland. I played pool with George the Broussard last night and Duke sounds fricken incredible! It all brought back alot of fond memories. That sure was a fun game to make and Mr. Nukem has a long way to go before he gets too old. I don't know how they're doing it all without me, but I wish I was still there ;)

---

---

As was said above, Rich was involved with just one title with us, Duke Nukem 3D, but it was an important one. Here's a few Levelord related links for you to peruse.

• Our Duke Nukem 3D Catalog Page
• Levelord's Home Page (graphic material alert :) )
• The Levelord page on Wikipedia
• Ritual's Website

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series, as we wind it down. After this one, there's only two issues left.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:00 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Weekly Update Update

Just a short note about this week's Prey Weekly Update. There isn't going to be one this week. Chris sent over an ICQ message saying they're just too busy to take the time to write one today for the update.

This is understandable, as they're incredibly busy at this point as they race toward finishing the game and the gold announcement that we're sure people are waiting for. Chris wanted to pass along his apologies for not doing an update this week, but we're sure you'll understand.

In the meantime, if you haven't seen it, make sure to check out our Camera Captioning Contest, where you can win a free copy of Prey!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:33 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey.com website relaunched

The Official website for Prey has been redesigned. Sporting the best of the old design, and a bunch of totally new content, you can check it out now over at http://www.prey.com.

There's quite a few new pieces in the site, here's a list of some of them:

• The features section now shows small example videos of styles of gameplay such as Gravity Flipping, Wall Walking, etc..
• Several game videos available in streaming or downloadable formats (E3 2006 Trailer, gameplay trailers, etc)
• All new "Characters" section where you can see some of the characters and read about them. An example of this is shown in the screen capture to the right.
• Downloadable AIM & MSN Prey Icons
• Downloadable Wallpapers for your computer

That's not all, either. There is a "Music" section in the site which currently does not have anything in it, but will shortly - info on what will be there is forthcoming.

Special thanks go out to the crew at 2K for putting all this together, it looks really good, guys! Head on over and check out all the changes, and download yourself a few Prey items for free!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:21 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey is "Worth Your While"

Gaming news site ign.com is running a story now entitled, "The Games of Summer 2006". In it, they talk about how most games are released towards the end of the year and hardly anything is released during the summer months. The focus here is how 2006 is not like the norm and there are a lot of good games for the Xbox 360 coming out. They even go so far as to say "Generally, however, summer is the kiss of death for games. We're happy to say that between now and the end of August a handful of original, worthwhile Xbox 360 games will hit retail stands."

Of course Prey is in this article; here's what they had to say about Prey:

"Human Head has taken a game that started eight years ago (the first tech demo was shown in 1995), was put on the back burner, and was then reignited and made something genuinely awesome. That's one hell of a story in itself. But the real story is how beautiful the game looks and how well it plays on the Doom 3 engine. Starting with the initial story based around alien abduction and Native American mythology, gamers soon learn they haven't just been brought onto a space ship. They've been transported to an organic, living alien universe, replete with portals, anti-gravity gameplay, and spiritual weapons. The game runs smoothly in both single- and multi-player modes (the latter of which we witnessed at E3), and the mixture of high tech alien and low-tech Native American weapons gives the game a real unique spin. The demos we played enabled eight people in multiplayer, and we'll find out more if that's the final number or not. Still, this should give your summer a real boost."

Head on over to IGN to check out the full article and see what else you can play when you're done with Prey. :)

UPDATE @ Noon: Turns out they have a similar article on Summer games for the PC as well. Prey is listed there too. Prey is actually the only game that IGN has listed on both their 360 & PC articles. Here's what they said about the PC version:

"Well, first impressions of Prey were underwhelming -- it looked like a Doom 3 knock-off. Then came the E3 video, and everything was different. Prey was brightly colored, appeared to contain a solid storyline featuring an unconventional hero, and made us dizzy. Literally. We're still impressed by the idea of changing the direction of gravity (or maybe it's just the room rotating around us, who knows), and those portals look both fun and fascinating, especially when they're set up in a circle as we saw in one recent clip -- so you can see yourself walking through the portal before you walk through the portal. Also, choosing a Dyson sphere of sorts for its setting is also intriguing. Futuristic cities and glowing nebulas are great, but how about a living ship the size of a small moon? We look forward to it, although we may need to get some airline sickness bags."

Posted by Joe Siegler at 9:27 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #21 - Darren Baker

In 1995, Apogee Software released the first title under our new branded label concept. That was Terminal Velocity under the "3D Realms" brand. This concept was used a second time in 1998, when we released "Balls of Steel" under the "Pinball Wizards" label. As with the "3D Realms" branding idea, the Pinball Wizards one was to launch a series of pinball related titles. However, to date Balls of Steel was the only title put out under the Pinball Wizards brand.

One of the driving forces behind the Balls of Steel title was Darren Baker. Darren Baker was actually involved with two other titles with us before Balls of Steel in 1998. Those titles were Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage as well as Mystic Towers (both in 1994). So Darren has been involved with us for several years now.

Darren, mostly due to his location (Australia), has one of the more unique relationships with us. Despite having worked on three seperate titles with us, has never met us face to face. It's one of the more unique aspects of our company, having developers all over the world. Let's get to his interview:

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I came into direct contact with Apogee in 1993 (I was 18) through a group of guys here in Brisbane who were developing a very cool (256 color parallax scrolling!!) game called Halloween Harry. I managed to get onto the team and contributed the digital sound engine. My brother Steven also composed a good deal of the music for the game.

Harry was picked up for Australian distribution by Manaccom, who then lined up US distribution through Apogee.

We had heard of Apogee prior to all this of course, particularly with the Commander Keen and Wolfenstein games, so to be associated with them was very exciting.

The Harry project then led to Mystic Towers (with another team on which I was the PC programmer), then eventually to Balls of Steel, as Wildfire Studios.

So basically Apogee published the first 3 commercial games I worked on.

Darren Baker at his desk with Fidelio - Feb 2006

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

I guess the initial reason was that we had the contacts with Apogee, and Scott and George were willing to support and take chances on inexperienced - albeit talented - teams, and overseas ones to boot.

As for going on your own, other people I knew had tried the "do everything" route (eg one or two people doing code, art, sound, manuals, packing, duplication, distribution!), and invariably the efforts were less than rewarding financially. At the time, getting products marketed and distributed properly was not something we properly understood or were even really interested in. We were far more concerned with the challenge of developing the games themselves, and when a successful company like Apogee offers you advances to get on and do what you enjoy, how good is that?! :)

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

I think Apogee did a great job with Balls of Steel. I think sales suffered a bit because the game's promotion led the ship date too far (or the ship date trailed the promotion, depending how you look at it!) That wasn't entirely their fault... ;)

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

I have no doubt the final product was better for Apogee's involvement.

Balls of Steel took a somewhat different direction than we had originally intended for it once Apogee came on board. Originally it was to be more of a true-to-life pinball simulator, but a mixture of Apogee's influence, a need to better our competitors, and good ol' feature creep led it to be more of a hybrid sim / action game. Of course the most obvious Apogee influence is the Duke Nukem table, but the overall 'hardcore' feel probably owes a fair bit to them too.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Yes, it's best from the creator's point of view to retain the IP rights. But it's also best from the publisher's point of view that the publisher get the IP rights in exchange for the funding. Both can be reasonable points of view depending on the money involved and other specifics of the deal.

I certainly believe that developers should relinquish/sell their IP very reluctantly and only after much consideration. They need to negotiate to keep whatever they can.

Final Balls of Steel Box Art

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

Yes, definitely. After Balls of Steel we reused our pinball engine technology to develop half a dozen more pinball games and licensed it out to other developers.

More recently, a key part of our business in the casual games market is to retain ownership of our brand and carefully control territory and platform distribution rights. This allows us to reuse and license our technology, create sequels and spinoff games, and control revenue streams from online and worldwide retail channels. This strategy has paid off for our hit game Tumblebugs, for instance.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

The idea has been kicked around on and off. Apogee actually owns the trademark for Balls of Steel (see, Scott's not *completely* silly and giving away IP rights all over the place :)) but we're pretty free to do another game, which is great.

We'd really like to do a Balls of Steel 2... maybe with a Duke Nukem Forever table.. yeah, that would be cool.

In the PC market pinball tends to be a budget title genre though, but I'd want something much better than that. I think it'd be a great fit for the PSP.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

What's odd is that such stories are quite hard to come up with, because I've never actually met *any* of the Apogee folks. Not one. We've only ever swapped emails, and had the occasional phone call. The upside is I still have something to look forward to!

However, one thing I do distinctly remember is when Scott offered us the Duke Nukem 3D license to include in Balls of Steel.

We hadn't seen the game, and to be honest, we didn't think a whole lot of the first two Duke games (sorry Todd et al!), so we were sceptical to say the least. And it didn't help a whole lot either when were sent nothing but a CD full of raw Duke graphics like static cutouts of pig cops and loads of various gibs :) What's more, we were also going to have to scrap a whole lot of work we'd done on the Devil's Island table to make room for it.

I do remember Scott insisting that the game was definitely going to be a hit, but still, pigs with guns ... riiight...

Anyhow we eventually got a build of the game, and that's when the 'maybe' rapidly became 'yes please'!

(Besides, it was only fair - they put a Balls of Steel pinball table in Duke :))

Pre-Pinball Wizards unused Balls of Steel Box Art

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I'd guess the perceived risk is the big factor, but I think it's actually a smart business move if you can manage a nascent external team and provide the missing ingredients (funding, marketing, business, management, QA etc) and harness their idealism and creativity.

I have asked myself over the years whether I'd do for another team today what Apogee did for us back then, and I'd like to think I would. One difference is I'd want to do more due diligence and manage the teams a lot more closely ('from the inside') rather than just hope that they kept delivering milestones from time to time and didn't drop the ball! It took us over 2 years to ship Balls of Steel, and while I don't think Apogee was overly sweating the advances, it was definitely a long time to be on a project.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

In some ways that question's quite difficult for me to answer, because I think I have learned and changed so much over that time that it can be tough to compare objectively.

I was going to say that were we starting out now, we would have a much harder time getting a deal, and that there'd be no Apogees out there to give us a break. But with the booming casual games industry over the last couple of years, the window has once again opened for small developers to get games to market, so that's not really true.

There is of course the usual observations that the budgets are bigger, the teams are huge, that most games are based on licences, etc.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

For the most part I've been CEO and Technical Director of Wildfire Studios. I worked as a programmer for a short while in London a few years ago for another developer, and that was an excellent experience. I'm really enjoying the success Wildfire is having, and it's interesting moving my focus from programming, which has always been my passion, to the business to ensure we sustain and grow.

The Duke Nukem table from Balls of Steel

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

Heh, I've thought about *leaving* the industry from time to time, but there's nothing I can think of doing that requires such a blend of technical, creative and business skills. It's very stimulating. :)

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Yes, quite a few. I think we could have exploited the success (critical if not commercial) of Balls of Steel in various ways, but didn't have the perception and know-how to do it. That said, we haven't done too badly at all, but we could have been smarter and focused on the right things. But overall I regard the early days (including our time with Apogee) as an excellent apprenticeship in the industry.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke 3D was my favourite, that sucked down (so to speak!) way too much of my time. The network play was awesome.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

I think the Infocom games (Zork etc) are some of the best of all time.

In more recent years I thought the original Unreal was excellent.

These days I don't play games for entertainment anywhere near as much as I used to, now my interest is more of an analytical one.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

I would like to thank Scott, George, Joe and the rest of the Apogee crew that we worked with over the years. They were instrumental in getting us started in the industry, and great to work with. I still keep tabs on what Apogee/3D Realms is up to, and listen closely to what Scott has to say about the business of games.

As to our fans - stay tuned. We've got some great new games on the way!

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As was said above, Darren has been involved with three seperate titles with us. We have plenty of information available on them on our website, please use the links below:

• Our Balls of Steel Catalog Page
• Our Alien Carnage Catalog Page
• Our Mystic Towers Catalog Page
• Mystic Towers Page on Wikipedia
• Balls of Steel Page on Wikipedia
• Wildfire Homepage

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series. The series is close to being finished, we have two more interviews planned, plus a wrap up edition. The last couple will be special issues, so you're going to want to tune in for those.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:02 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Vote for Prey

Short and sweet. Voodoo Extreme is running a poll now asking the question "Coolest upcoming PC action game?". Head on over there and vote for Prey!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 9:13 AM

Prey Weekly Update #21

Well, it's June 2nd, and we're twenty days away from the demo launch on the PC & Xbox 360. The game is closer to release, and as such, Chris Rhinehart has had to ask for backup for this week's weekly Prey update. This is again not Chris, this is Joe Siegler of 3D Realms. Chris asked me this in an email.. "Would YOU like to do the weekly update this week? Give 3DR's perspective on what you've been working on over the past couple of weeks or so?"

While my personal involvement outside the forums is mostly deathmatch testing, I said I'd take a stab at it. So without further ado, here goes the Prey Update for this week.

Recently at 3D Realms, we've spent a bunch of time on MultiPrey both in the full version as well as in the demo. It's a real hard job being forced to play deathmatch at work, but hey. Someone's got to do it. Because of the repetitive nature of testing games close to completion, you tend to know the source material pretty well. Since most of what I do in testing now is MultiPrey, I'll give a few of my own insights into that.

The MultiPrey Server Creation Screen

The "Prey stuff" that is in deathmatch definitely brings a whole new world to the concept. I started playing Deathmatch in videogames with most other people, back in 1993 with Doom. To most of us that were around back then, it's still held up as a great game with great deathmatch. Sure, there's been plenty others over the years (Dukematch and WangBang come to mind). Online play has expanded over the years into all kinds of various modes, but Prey Deathmatch is a really cool mix of old school deathmatch feel, as well as being more up to date with the gravity flipping and portals in the current technology.

It's all pretty darn cool. The first few times you play, if you play against someone else who knows the concepts introduced with Prey Deathmatch, they'll school your ass, as you're not used to looking in every direction for incoming fire generally. Back in the old days with Doom, ROTT, and the like you had just left and right to contend with. Quake introduced up and down to the mix, and it's pretty much stayed that way until now. While Quake allows for incoming fire to come from almost every direction, the base play remained the same, as you had to be "on" something - up and down were constants for the most part, despite the Z axis now being brought into play. Prey changes that with gravity flipping and wall walking. Quite frequently I play one of the levels with a bunch of wallwalks, and as I'm being shot, it's sometimes hard to tell where the shooting is coming from when the guy is above your head shooting straight up at you. It's quite interesting to be in a map looking straight up, and seeing another character doing the same thing to you - up and down are quite different concepts here, and seriously impact how you play deathmatch.

Portals also bring an interesting twist to the party. I was playing MultiPrey in one level, and kept shooting myself, but I didn't realize it at the time. You see, there was one bit where the level designer constructed the layout of the portals such that when you came out of one portal, you saw what you think is someone else going into another one. This being deathmatch, you shoot at everyting, so you fire at it - and it ends up being yourself! What's brilliant about this particular bit of level design is that you get to see just enough to let you know someone is there, but not enough to know who it is. So if you're heavy into deathmatch and aren't paying attention to what you're shooting at, you're likely to be shooting yourself. It's quite funny.

The maps that come in the Prey demo for deathmatch most definitely show off the cool wallwalking and gravity flipping aspects of Prey. There's a couple of screenshots below showing a few of these things from MultiPrey. Prepare for something new to the genre of good old fashioned deathmatch.

Some other things we've done at 3DR recently have been design issues like approving the box art. It might not seem like a lot - just put a picture up there, but there's a million small fiddly bits regarding box art, placement of logos, names, images, etc. I've been here a long time and have seen a lot of games come out, and box art design has always been an issue where the smallest most minute detail gets a lot of discussion.

The game manuals are also underway - there will be a print manual both with the PC & 360 versions. They all have to be read over many times for accuracy as well as other things again like placement of images, things of that nature.

One other section that has been tested a lot is the Triton delivery system. Sure, you can go to the store and buy a box, but you will also be able to buy the full game over Triton, and this needs testing. The last few beta builds we got at 3DR have come through Triton, which is kind of cool. What's nice about the Triton system is that you don't have to wait for the entire title to come down to play. After a certain percentage of the game has been downloaded, you are asked if you want to start playing right away. You can choose to start playing (depending on your download speed) after a short while, and the remainder of the game will be streamed to your computer in the background while you play.

We're also testing the Xbox 360 version, too. In previous updates, others have mentioned testing going on. At 3D Realms we get the builds from Venom in the UK - they get copied to the dev kit 360's, and away we go. While I personally haven't played it, I've watched others, and I have to say it looks as smooth as the PC games do - Venom has done a great job here. You can't really tell the difference, and the hitching that seems to plague Quake IV on the 360 is not in evidence here. It's a smooth title. Looks good and feels good on the 360.

Builds have been coming pretty frequently the last few weeks (in some instances multiples in one day), it ends up being a lot of work. Yeah, it is work at a game company. Yeah, it's fun, but when you're told "OK, you have to focus on such and such a level in this mode", and you want to play another level... Yeah - I know what you're thinking. Shut your whining, you work for a game company. You get to play games. :)

Venom has been crunching hardcore over the past few weeks to get the 360 version of Prey together. Some of the highlights they've done recently:

• Tons and tons of bug fixes
• Overall gameplay tweaks based upon feedback from HH and 3DR. Some creatures were designed for the fast movement of the mouse, so we had to rework some of the gameplay values for those creatures
• Greatly improved texture resolution (there were some memory issues for a while, and as a test, Venom reduced the overall texture resolution on the game.) But, they found the memory issues, fixed them, and now have bumped the resolution back up higher.
• Tweaks to the feel of the controls
• A few tweaks to the default gamma/brightness
• Tweaks to the autoaim system to make it fair and useful
• Overall, they are kicking ass on the 360 version of Prey. Visually, it looks identical to the PC version.

Prey is close, my friends. You're gonna want to visit back in 20 days when the demo is released, and you can check out all this stuff on your own.

Until next week,
Joe Siegler - Webmaster
3D Realms (aka not Chris Rhinehart)

P.S. Just because he didn't think I'd actually post this, here's a picture of myself getting totally schooled by someone else up here. Check out this score. There, I did it Bryan - you happy now? :)

Additionally, if you are a gaming news website, and wish to be updated directly with notification of these updates, please email us with a link to your website and a request to be added, and we'll email you with the next update.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 5:20 PM | Discuss this story on our forums